David William Pye OBE (18 November 1914 – 1 January 1993), was Professor of Furniture Design at The Royal College of Art, 1964–1974.
[1] Among his pupils were David Colwell (Trannon), Richard la Trobe Bateman, Charles Dillon, Jane Dillon, Floris van den Broecke and Roger Dean.
[citation needed] Pye was an accomplished wood-turner and carver, but also worked on the theory of design and handcraft.
[2] In the 1960s Pye wrote two major and influential works:[3] One of Pye's best known concepts is "the workmanship of risk", by which he means "workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works" (The Nature and Art of Workmanship, p. 4).
Where that failure is allowed to enter in is an arbitrary result of the process of designing.